One of my teachers (Akim Demaille from Epita) leads a French start up whose aim is to unify the way we communicate with robots (sort of) : http://www.gostai.com/
iRobot, who were once a start-up themeselves, recently bought Nekton Research, a start-up that made underwater robots. I suspect that most start-ups are spun out of the research world and have the military as their primary customers.
